Short Film Primary Research #3 - 'The Prowling'

This is a student example of a thriller short film that I have recently wanted, 'The Prowling', this short film was the end result of some students A2 media coursework.

I feel like this short film has some positives but then also some negatives. One positive being it was filmed quite well, a tripod was used effectively and there was also some interesting and appropriate uses of POV shots, such as when the stalker is coming up the stairs in the house.

One negative I found with this short film is that there were some questionable editing decisions. For example, the scene would straight-cut to another shot of basically the same action, or just a split second apart. Such as when the girl is at the cupboard taking out a glass, there are about 5 different shots in this even though the full action would only take about 6 seconds, and most of the shots are basically the same. This was just something I picked out on and was wondering if it was really necessary.

One more positive thing I found was that the sound design was fairly good throughout, I liked the subtle background music to add to the suspense of the short film, however the sudden sound effect every time the stalker came on screen may have been overused, although when it was used for the first time it was effective.

I do like the plot for this short film, although you could argue it is very cliche and it's very common within student short films.